Agence France Presse
March 18 2005

Secessionist leaders in former Soviet regions to strengthen ties

AFP 19/03/2005 00:49

MOSCOW, March 18 (AFP) – Four breakaway regions in former Soviet
republics plan to conclude a mutual support pact, one of their
leaders said Friday.

“We intend to reach a mutual support agreement,” Sergei Bagapsh,
leader of Georgia’s rebellious Abkhazia region, was quoted as saying
by the ITAR-TASS news agency during a visit to Moscow.

Bagapsh said he would soon meet with his counterparts Eduard Kokoity
of South Ossetia (Georgia), Arkady Gukasyan of Nagorno-Karabakh
(Azerbaijan), and Igor Smirnov of Transdniestr (Moldova).

The Russian media has suggested the leaders of the four regions met
secretly here on Wednesday and would do so again in April in the
Abkhazian town of Sukhumi.

Moscow has been accused of encouraging the two Georgian secession
movements, and has supplied peacekeepers after they beat back troops
from Tbilisi in wars after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russian troops intervened to stop fighting that broke out in
Transdniestr in 1992, and have never left.

Fighting also broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian
enclave in Azerbaijan, as the Soviet Union was collapsing. It has
remained in Armenian hands since a 1994 ceasefire.